Ah, a day to relax, sleep in, hit the pool, relax, read my book….
We are up at the crack of dawn, and wait patiently until we can go to breakfast and not look like midnight buffet stragglers. A small portion of hash and eggs for me, with a slice of cheese on the side.
They put in your room every night a schedule of events for the next day, and we’ve highlighted a few things we’d like to try to squeeze in. After lingering over a cup of tea, we headed off for the cooking demonstration. The chef is the French Chef from the specialty restaurant on board the ship – The Olympic. The dish today is shrimp wrapped in parma ham, sauteed, with a dessert of zabaglione. Brighid is swooning over the chef – who is cute, with a dry sense of humor (gotta like that in a man). He could be making rat on a stick and Brighid is going to love it.
They pass around pieces of the sauteed shrimp – the flavor is very nice, but it’s a little overcooked for my taste. Dot is disappointed that they don’t pass the dessert, but zabaglione is not my favorite dessert, and I can’t eat it anyway, so I’m good with skipping the second course.
It’s just about lunch time, so we head up to the buffet. The soup selections here are limited to one, and it’s usually not great. But, I can usually eat something like a piece of chicken or beef or pork and be satisfied with that, and I think the choice today was pork.
After lunch, we head to the shopping lecture from Jennifer – the onboard shopping expert. She knows everything about where to shop everywhere. She mentions someplace in Santorini that has candied nuts, so we plan to add that to our excursion free time to see if they have Jordan almonds or chocolate covered cashews for Dot.
Jennifer goes on for quite a while, and it is approaching 2:30, which is when Dot and I are going to the make-up demonstration and Brighid and Russell are going to swing dance lessons. The lighting isn’t very good for the poor girl doing the makeup demonstrations, but she does have some nice products, and after she is finished, we make appointments for Brighid and Dot to get made over on the next at sea day, which is a formal night.
We rejoin Brighid and Russell, who has two left feet, according to his granddaughter, and we lounge around during tea time in the Cova coffee bar. We enjoy a cup of tea and a few tea sandwiches and pastries, and then decide to skip dinner in the dining room in favor of the buffet so we can go see a movie in the theater. The movie is The Producers, and I wanted to see it on Broadway, so I’m up for it.
When we arrive upstairs at 5 for the buffet, we find out that the casual dining is by reservation only, but you can still get pasta from the pasta bar, and they are setting up a sushi bar, which won’t be open until 5:30. Russ and Dot hit the pasta bar, and Brighid follows, but before too long, it’s 5:30, and Brighid and I both hit the sushi bar. I eat the fish off of the top of some of the rolls and enjoy a hot cup of shrimp miso soup. They had this same set up at least a few of the other nights – it was a nice variation on the regular buffet.
We headed down to the theater to see the movie. It was funny, but I was so tired, I caught myself dozing more than a few times. It was so hard to stay awake. The movie starred both Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the roles they played on Broadway, so convinced myself it was just like seeing the real thing – only cheaper 😉 Maybe that allowed me to fall asleep, because I hope if I had paid $100 or more to see them on Broadway, I would have been able to stay awake.
After the movie, it was time for the main seating show, which tonight is called “I Love the Nightlife”. It stars the performance group from the ship – singers and dancers – and it is very lively and really good. We all completely enjoyed it.
After the show, we headed back to our room and Brighid and I ordered a last night snack of chicken soup, a cheese plate and a fruit plate. We watched a little TV then fell asleep. We have another early day tomorrow!